90. Saving Lives at Scale: Part Two

Greg Nokes, Master Technical Architect at Heroku, is joined by Alex Broussard, the CTO of THINKMD. THINKMD is a technology company that's working to build next-generation clinical logic. The primary aim is to put healthcare tools in the hands of anyone, anywhere, but especially in places where healthcare access is limited. As Alex points out, the obvious challenge in such a platform is to optimize the application to work in low bandwidth settings. To work around this limitation, THINKMD designed their platform as a progressive web application, ensuring that, not matter what, it function as an "offline first" app. Data is collected and stored locally, and transmissions between the client and the server occur when Internet connectivity is restored.

In addition to networking challenges, the functionality and the visual design of the app also has strict hardware limitations. The mobile devices running THINKMD are not smartphones, but rather older feature phones which lack touchscreens and keyboards. However, they're still very durable, with incredible battery life, and operate better under remote conditions. These phones run an operating system called KaiOS, which allows developers to build networked apps that run in Chrome browser environment. As well, THINKMD was founded by two doctors, which requires every update to the app to pass very rigorous clinical standards. Information that's presented cannot just have a good UX: it must also be accurate, as it's literally dealing with life or death situations.

THINKMD's frontend runs on Vue.js. This choice was partially made because of Vuetify, which provides localization support, a component that's key to the app as it's used in over a dozen languages. By trusting how Vue and Vuetify support the look-and-feel of the app, Alex and his team can focus more on the backend data retrieval and delivery, including setting up duplicate servers across Asia and Africa to address latencies. For other teams who are building a multi-regional app targeted at low latency countries, Alex strongly suggests that you consider optimization techniques in advance of feature development.

Links

• THINKMD's mission is to eliminate preventable deaths by increasing healthcare access via new and disruptive technologies
• KaiOS brings smartphone functionality to affordable devices